Other great cycling institutions exist, which are rendering good service to the general public in various ways, one notably in calling attention to the decadence of our public roads since the old coaching-days. In many parts of the country, main roads now exist that are all but impassable to ordinary traffic; their deterioration may be attributed mainly to the competition and monopolisation of the railways in diverting the traffic that once passed over them. Their condition is a misfortune to the public in general, and especially to the inhabitants of the locality; for as good roads are certain to advance the prosperity of a district, so bad ones have ever been considered an indication of a backward state of civilisation. The local authorities to whom the construction and maintenance of these roads have been intrusted, are being aroused to a sense of their responsibility by influentially and numerously attended meetings of persons interested in cycling; the laws relating to the highways have been collected and discussed, and many leading newspapers have given prominence to the grievances vented at these assemblies. If the result should be the amelioration of the condition of these highways, the thanks of the general public will be due to the cyclists, and it will tend to forge still stronger the link which is fast binding them into closer fellowship.
To many manufacturing towns, the rise of cycling has been a boon; to one in particular, Coventry, it has proved perhaps the greatest blessing that has ever befallen it. That ancient city was fast sinking into absolute inertness through the falling-off of its staple trade; it can now boast of being one of the most prosperous towns of the midlands, with huge manufactories and busy hives of men sending forth to the world those apparently delicate structures which are now in such universal request. Other towns, such as Birmingham, London, Wolverhampton, &c., sensibly feel the demands of the two hundred thousand cyclists who are computed to be in Great Britain alone, and the export trade of these towns is rapidly becoming greater in this particular branch. The two and three wheeler have now penetrated to nearly every part of the globe; they are no longer strangers to the Russian, the Turk, and the Hindu; in Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand, they make steady progress; and even the sacred land of the Celestials is not free from their enchantments. This wide and general dissemination of a sport which is essentially English, cannot fail to be a source of the greatest gratification to those who so sturdily fought for it and upheld it during the trials of its early existence.